


Ready

by Seiya234



Series: Transcendence AU [19]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Gen, falling star au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 03:36:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7250422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiya234/pseuds/Seiya234
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mabel and Dipper and the hard discussions.</p><p>Or, the Dreambender and the Incarnation of Chaos have a long overdue talk about mortality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ready

“Aren’t you going to drink your tea?”

Dipper looked up from contemplating his liver spotted hands and into the swirling galaxy eyes of his twin.

“Yeah, sure,” he muttered and gracelessly took a slurp of the peppermint tea Mabel had waiting for him when she brought him here.

He had only dreamt, truly dreamt, three times since he had died and woken up as something else entirely. Every time Mabel had taken him to a new part of her dreamscape and this time was no different.

The two of them laid on one of the many blankets Mabel had made over the years-this one consisted of all the sweaters she had made and worn when she was pregnant with the kids. Towering above them was a massive apple tree, and even here the fruit had a terribly bitter skin followed by the sweetest flesh he had ever tasted. The sky for once was blue, though the clouds were still cotton candy pink and in the shape of different animals. The wind whistled and sang as it blew through the waving grass and in the distance Dipper could see pigs frolicking and rolling in the grass and mud.

His sister was the same as she always was in this place- the only constant to her appearance her galaxy rainbow swirl eyes and shooting star sweater, with everything else subject to change.

But this time, even as her hair and skin, hands and marks, even as her everything changed, they were all consistently old.

He wasn’t ready for this. He knew he would never be ready for this conversation, for what would follow after, but it didn’t change the fact that he felt like someone was repeatedly punching him in the gut.

“Dipper. Dippingdots!”

A hand snaked over and smacked him upside the head. “Goober!”

Dipper winced and rubbed where Mabel had hit him. “Sheesh, Mabel, we’re 124, don’t you think we’re a little old for that?”

Mabel frowned at her brother. “You’ll stop being too old for that once you stop being all avoidy and mopey.”

“I’m not avoidy! That’s not even a word by the way, maybe I should get you one of those word a day calendars-”

“Avoidance!” Mabel trilled, but there was an undercurrent in her voice that reminded him that she wasn’t alone in her meat sack.

His head dropped and he looked into his cup of tea. “Why do we need to talk about this now?”

“Because if we don’t you’ll be having this talk with our corpse-”

“ _MAB̛E̛L̶!̸_!”

They looked at him and Dipper fought the urge to squirm as they went on. “Because you’re good at pushing these kind of hard talks off on her. Because we aren’t letting you leave until you say your piece and we say mine.”

She stirred her tea then took the spoon out of the cup and pointed it at Dipper. “There’s been something you’ve wanted to say since we came back from the doctor. Spit it out.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and a tear trickled out of his left eye and tracked down his cheek.

“Mabel I…. This is hard.”

“Well brobro, things are just going to get harder from here so suck it up.”

He winced. Of everyone, it was always only her that could really hurt him.

Mabel went on, picking up a teacup blue piglet that had wandered their way and plopping it in her lap for pets. “I gave you like, a million chances to actually talk to us about it but you wouldn’t. We tried to talk to you but you wouldn’t _listen_.”

Dipper sighed. “You really aren’t going to let me go until I say what you want, aren’t you?”

Mabel nodded.

There was quiet for another minute or two. They drank their tea while above them the clouds shifted into symbols, pine trees and triangles and little axes. Mabel said nothing. They could afford to be patient.

“It’s in your liver,” Dipper finally said.

“Yes.”

“And you turned down chemo and a transplant- Mabel,  _w̫͉̞͢h̵̝̰̹̩̜y̢?”_

Mabel sighed. “Dipper, I’m tired and-”

He interrupted her. “But you’ve had cancer before! Twice! And… And you took care of it both times so why no̻̜͈̘̳̻̼͢t͚ _̕no̵͈̞̭_ w̛?!” His voice, which had started out so quiet, rang loud and clear in the clearing.

She took his hand.

“It’s time. I’m ready.”

“But you can-”

“Fight it yes but it’ll come back. It’s been coming back, and it will just keep coming back. It’s time. We’re ready.”

At the “we” Dipper’s eyes lit up, spotting an opportunity.

“Surely you can do something about this?” It was clear by the tone of his voice which ‘you’ he meant.

The other being that shared Mabel’s flesh shook their head. “I engender life, I am life, even life that has run riot.”

“But-”

“I am the parasite, the virus, the germ. I am that which preys on the other. We are life and life is not always pretty Dipper Pines.”

He ran his hands through his hair, knocking his hat askew.

“So you can do something and you just aren’t is that it?”

“Dipper, you’re hurting her feelings-”

“Well she’s hurting mine!” he snarled and he knew, he knew how childish he sounded but Dipper didn’t even care. Mabel was going to die and she could do something about it and she wasn’t going to-

“Mabel’s soul is mine. I could make you kill the cancer cel-”

The world went white. For a second, he knew nothing, was nothing.

Color and sight returned. His ears were ringing. Blood trickled down his face from his nose and eyes and ears. And Mabel-

“Until you calm down you talk to me, not Mabel.”

“Calm do-”

“And if you ever try that again,” Chaos continued, her voice soft, silky, gentle. “I will destroy you and damn the consequences. You do not do that. You do not treat people you love that way.”

His stomach clenched and his heart wrung tight.

“I didn’t mean to-”

“Yes you did. You meant every word you said.”

And just like that all of his anger was gone, replaced instead with a cold, terrible dread.

He opened his mouth to apologize, to say something, anything, but nothing came out.

The air was chill now, and the grass was slowly withering up, drying out and falling rotten to the ground. In front of him, the face of the being wearing Mabel’s skin contorted and twisted.

“I..are you-“ He wasn’t sure for a second who they were talking to before he realized they were talking to each other. “… are we sure? He’s going to- Seriously? I..you… okay-“

Chaos stabbed a finger at him.

“She’s coming out again, she wants to talk to you, but if you pull another stunt like that-“

“I won’t.”

“Good. Because I’m not going anywhere. Because I can’t. Because…” Chaos seemed to realize that they had backed themselves into a corner verbally. “Because yeah.”

Dipper nodded and the body in front of him still had infinite galaxy rainbow swirl eyes, still shifted features faster than a chameleon but he knew, he knew that it was mostly Mabel in control of front of him now.

(How could he not? They had been together his entire life and now she was going to  _leave-_ )

She smiled wanly. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

Silence reigned again. The teacup piglet on Mabel’s lap had fallen asleep and was beginning to snore.

“I don’t want to leave you Dipper,” Mabel finally said.

“Then don’t.”

Her face crumpled and he knew, damnit damnit  _damnit_ , that he had hurt her again.

“I’m sorry Mabel.”

She smiled wanly. “It’s okay… No, it’s not, not really. But it’s okay that it’s not okay.” She shook her head as if to clear it.

“I just… can you respect our wishes? About Veronica-Bean?”

“Veronica-Bean?”

“That’s what this one is going to be called!”

Dipper barely swallowed a groan. As if it wasn’t bad enough that Mabel had had cancer ( _did_  have it), she then insisted on naming her tumors.

The less said about Lunglump McFartbreath and Edward Von Fontlebottom the better.

Mabel picked the sleeping piglet up and gently placed it on the ground next to her. Then she reached over and held Dipper’s hand.

“You know… you know that it wouldn’t work,” his twin said, gently. “That there’s only so long you can keep fixing up the human body before it gets weird and bad and manky.”

“I know.”

“And….” She looked down at her chest, brow furrowed. “We need to be free. _She_  needs to be free; it’s… well to be honest it’s been throwing things a bit out of wack, being we and wearing a meat sack.”

“Uh, should I be worried about that-?”

“Nah, just a few stars moving out of alignment and sentient life on Saturn gaining a few extra strands of DNA, it’s no bigs.” They squeezed his hand. “But even if we weren’t us, it’s still time. We’re ready. I don’t want to spend my last few years in a hospital bed. I want to be home, with you and the kids and Henry. I want this Dipper.”

He looked at his sister.

She looked at him, gentle smile on his face, completely trusting that he would agree, that he would do the right thing.

He blew out a breath and with it most of his fight.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

She closed their eyes. “Thank you Dipper.”

The other piglets in the fields, every color of the rainbow and a few only art students could see, began to slowly make their way to the blanket. They began to settle down next to their sibling, surrounding Mabel until she was sitting in a half circle of tiny sleeping pigs.

“You know what you can do for us?” she said, scratching one of the new arrivals on its head and smiling with satisfaction to see it’s little legs kick in joy.

“What can I do for you?”

“Help me stay on my feet and kicking for as long as possible. I think we got about three, four years left before we go-“Mabel let out a little snort at the look on Dipper’s face. “It may be time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a trick or five up my sleeve, come on now.”

It wasn’t enough time, it would never be enough time, but all Dipper said was, “Whatever way I can help you I will.”

She held out a hand for him to shake. “Your help for sweaters from me? As many as I can make?”

“Yes.” He shook her hand. “Yes.”

She beamed at him and a century of life melted away from her face in an instant.

“Cool beans broseph.”

“Will I see you? In between that is?” The words rushed out of him, unbidden, and he wished he could swallow them back whole because she didn’t need this right now-

“Kind of.’ She shrugged. “We’ll-well, you and Mabel, you’ll be able to talk but-“

Her face shifted. He hadn’t seen that weight, that sadness on her face since Henry had passed.

“Death isn’t a two way street Dipper. And there will be some things you will never know, some places you can never follow me.”

A tear slipped down her face, black oil against her skin. “Your soul has been sundered. You’re no longer a part of the cycle but instead you sit outside of it. Dipper, I’m so sorry.”

Rage and sorrow flared up again in him, and he felt his skin heat with his anger, anger that could (would) swallow suns whole, but he struggled to keep in check, for Mabel’s sake.

“So that’s it? That’s what I got to look forward to for all eternity? Kept forever apart from everyone I’ve ever loved? What kind of fucking life is that?”

(okay so he was probably not doing a good job holding the anger in)

Despite the tears rolling down her face, a corner of Mabel’s mouth crooked up.

“Electric word, life.”

“Mabel-“

“It means forever and that’s a mighty long time.”

“Mabel please.”

“But seriously, nothing is forever. Not me, not this universe, not you, not nothing.”

Mabel’s eyes blazed and she leaned in to whisper in her ear.

“One day,” and that wasn’t his sister speaking now. “One day you will birth this reality anew. One day you will rejoin us all, and on that day your soul will shine brightest of all for everything you’ve endured and everything you’ve done for me.”

He couldn’t speak, and as Chaos leaned back, Mabel grinned and said, “Besides doofus, it’s not going to be all doom and gloom. You’ll see me again. You’ll see her… wow, a whole lot, Probably should try and make some other friends too.”

Dipper must not have looked convinced because she went on. “I’ll be different. Things change. That hurts. But there is so much wonder and joy and _love_ in front of you as well, if only you’ll let yourself see it and take it.”

She flicked his nose.

“So don’t be a massive angst monster for the next few eons or I will give you a piece of my mind.”

“Which you?”

She grinned, and Dipper felt his heart stutter, his ears begin to bleed, the skin crawl and threaten to melt off.

“Guess.”


End file.
